Tag Archives: Dance

Post navigation

For all of you music enthusiasts. Certainly for any of you drummers, you maestros of rhythm, or Lords of the Skins!

Here is the mystery: If the rhythm is right, if the translation between inner mood and the drum membrane are perfect, then you know it instantly. “Ah, this goes with my body tempo, this connects how I feel today, how fast my heart is beating, what my thoughts are, what my hands feel like.” — Drumming on the Edge of Magic: A Journey Into the Spirit of Percussion, by Micky Hart, Fredric Lieberman and Jay Stevens (1990)

I was inspired yesterday by a fellow blogger and musician (Ark)—if he considers drummers “musicians” (wink)—to write this post about how natural, how biologically embedded rhythm, patterns in sound vibrations, and beats or pulse are to the human neurology. Maybe it is different for percussionists and maybe it isn’t, the mathematics of rhythm that is, and how almost endlessly it can be shifted, divided, multiplied, or derived from previous… well, derivatives. The patterns, rhythms, and beats often have a common denominator, a baseline if you will. Yet, it is wonderfully and by no means permanent.

When the rhythm is right you feel it with all your senses, every corner of your soul and being. You don’t fight it, but instead allow yourself to be propelled and consumed by its insistent yet familiar feeling. All sense of the present moment disappears, the normal categories of time become meaningless. — Ibid

There are 12 distinct components or moods and pulses in this following 9-minute instrumental entitled La Villa Strangiato (An Exercise in Self-Indulgence). It is a human journey in sleep by a man with a lucid imagination coupled with a propensity for some extreme anxiety and/or tranquility. The epic song by Rush is from the very apropos cerebral album Hemispheres. One of the tranquil components: “To Sleep, Perchance to Dream…“ and anxious components: “Monsters!“ and “Monsters! (Reprise)“ both adaptations of a 1937 Raymond Scott jazz instrumental. I cannot fully express how masterful this piece is in complex mathematical drumming and syncopation by one Lord of the Skins that should give any percussion aficionado goose-bumps, Neil Peart!

We live on a planet of rhythm and time. A planet that completes its cycle around the sun every 365 days, with a moon that cycles around us every 28 days, and we rotate around our own axis every 24 hours. These cosmic cycles and our bodily ones, all connected to the circadian dance of day and night. The mystery of rhythm and time found for a moment in the soul’s drum. When it is right, you feel it with all your senses, every thread of your being. It is the ‘sweet spot’ of connection [to this cyclical planet and the celestial heavens in which it and we revolves]. — Ibid

Medical studies repeatedly show that getting your heart-rate up drumming or dancing, or both, for just 30 minutes a day is equal to one anti-depressant pill. My own studies have shown that dueling and complimenting another drummer on her/his kit (below) is equivalent to two pills of euphoria… similar to ecstasy, but better! And naturally legal! Can you imagine how healthy it is participating in a drum-circle with dancing!? Exercise! Get down and hard, get steamy sweaty!

Or if you prefer something more indigenous, reflective of our evolutionary roots, more primal, more Latin, then I give you Evening Samba by Mickey Hart and his indigenous percussion ensemble:

How about something highly erotic that reaches deep inside to the twisted Sorcerer/Sorceress unleashing a beast inside? And then hits your natural release, the endorphins to help carry us away, floating while time stands still, A Different Drum:

I’ve been spending 6-10 hours a day studying, reading, studying more, taking practice tests, reading, then studying more for the last five or six weeks minimum! I am really really fidgety and want to get up, Rise and let my “responsible” side give way to my primal pinned-up dancing side. So I spin the volume-knob clockwise…move…and jump, and bounce away in the rhythms. Care to join me?

Walls around your heart
I wanna get in
I wanna know you
You’re scared to lose it all
I know who you’ve been
But I’ll take a chance on you.

You fight the light
You push it away
You’re gone with the wind at the end of the day
But where are you going?
You play it safe
So there’s nothing to win
I wanna come closer but you won’t let me in
I wanna go where you’re going.

Pull me in tonight and stay forever
I wanna know the secrets of your heart.
Let’s begin tonight
It’s now or never
Love won’t happen till you try to cross the great divide.

I usually blog every four to five days. Not this time. Yesterday “Abundance Without” and again now; I am unusually energized and moved. I must share! I must express through motion…e-motion! Connecting to the fabrics of life: seeing, tasting, hearing and feeling — for me through music…I dance — touching someone you connect with, smelling each other’s pheromones, reacting to all their senses and movements…blending, combining, following, melting, merging…fusing. Listening with eyes closed…I am ALIVE, moving, synchronized with these words and rhythm, and it is so good. My soul lifts, swelling into everything around me.

Oh my love, it’s time
You know how it feels
You read between the lines
You know me better than I do
I lost again, my friend
You know I’m not a saint
You knew it all this time
Still you’ve been waiting for me…

Oh my love, it’s time
You know how it feels
You read between the lines

And know me better than I do
I’m lost again my friend
You know I’m not a saint
You’ve known it all this time
Still you’ve been waiting for me…

…on myriad themes, including – but, not limited to – ancient Rome to cats (especially THEO!) to "The Walking Dead" to Amsterdam to atheism to hockey to "Everybody Loves Raymond" to "Les Mis" and almost ALWAYS quotes Emerson!